My wife can take a shower as quick/quicker than I can. Now that her hair is as short as mine, and lets it go natural.* Also using body bath soap also helps as it cleans and moisturizes at the same time, and we use a 2 in 1, shampoo and conditioner, which helps cut down the amount of water used and time.*

Before a shower we check the shower pump to make sure it*turn on and off so no shower water goes into the bilge.* Usually by the time the water warms up enough the pump should come on and off. **Cleaning and drying out the bilge takes about a week. The sump pump is *connected*the bathroom sink drain.*****
After each shower we rinse down and sprat Clorox the shower to cut down the mold/mildew and keeps the shower sump clean/fresh.* The shower sump has easy access so it can be cleaned easily. *If the pan/container is deep and small it does not take very much water to turn the pump on and there is less than a ½ of water left in the container.* ***

When we first purchased Ancora, the shower pump was located under the house batteries, not a place for easy access. I dumped the pump and piped the shower right into the bilge sump. That was eight years ago and we have never had a problem. As an aside, my wife keeps the fiberglass shower easy to clean by using Turtle wax on the walls. Any car wax will do the trick.

We no longer use bar soap as it produced a thck film on everything in the shower, plugged the drain and made the sump pump stick occasionally. The best we have found is a body wash gel. It lathers great and wahes off easily and no more cleaning the shower with a putty knife.

Our shower, laundry i.e. all our greywater empties into the bilge and pumps over the side. We have been using the Amway range of products, they seem to be good on a boat, concentrated and biodegradable. The other plus is that they last forever and take up little room. The buildup in the bilge is low, no more than a quick hose out every 6 months and all is clear.
We live on a ferro boat which is happy with a wet bilge. I guess the reduced build up would apply to other shower/laundry systems.
Cheers

Refreshing" Bermuda bird bath." It does not matter how big a boat you have, you are camping.

This is for a re fresher at sea to get rid of" sea grunge, we do this trick on all of our ocean crossings.

Wet ones For an on deck refresher, we make up our own wet ones for use on hot *summer days.

Cut up a bunch of soft paper towels into quarters place in large tupper ware container with lid , add a little water and some *nice smelly stuff *place in fridge ready for use. Bermuda Bird bath
You will need a one gallon pail from Wally world.
fill pail with one quart *of water add a few drops of after shave to make you smell real nice and add some ice cubes. Using a micro cloth you will *have your" Bermuda bird bath."

Now here is *the ultra towel
When we go camping on a motorcycle we have not got room for a bunch of towels and even if so how do you get them dry.

Mavis to the rescue with Auto Chamois
We each have our own personal auto chamois hers is pink mine is blue.
We find this an excellent way *to " pat dry off" . it is a portable hair dryer also.

Donald & Mavis How do you know when you need a bath, well ! it is when the seaguls stay 50 ft off.

We catch rainwater from our roof which is stored *in a specially constructed 13,000 gal capacity *room under *the kitchen.

It is not necessary to treat the water as no light can enter the space.

The water is very soft and consequently we find it very easy to rinse soap off.

We have tried every *kind of bar soap out there and have come to the conclusion that Dove has them all beat, unfortunately we don't get much milage out of bar Dove soap.

We use Ivory bar soap at home for hand washing, alternately anti bacterial liquid soap works well.

However after swimming from our boat in our very salty water .

On the Boat we have a sponge bucket bath in the cockpit *using ivory liquid, with no after effects, *that is the best we can find to cut the salt.

With respect to boat water in addition to that which we carry in our tanks,we bring additional 5 *x 5 gallon jerry water jugs.

On the boat we always drink and cook with bottled water.
We never drink water from the boat tank.
For most boat tanks here only use*no more than 1 /2 cap of clorox .
City water comes pretreated not requiring clorox which may contribute to water being hard .

I have some recent experience with the whole shower sump question.* Last summer during our Puget Sound to Alaska trip*we began to have more than the usual amount of water in the bilge.* My first thought was the stuffing box or a leaking through hull...nope, it turned out being a syphoning shower sump pump box.* Both the shower sump and the through hull for the pump were below the water line and we were pulling sea water back into the boat after using the sump.* The temporary fix was to install a switch and to shut the through hull valve between showers.

The permanent*fix was to install one of the Whale Gulper pumps, an in-line switch and then plumb the pump hose up (above the water line) to tee with the sink in the head.* Bingo...a completely dry bilge.* Plus we have eliminated a big source of odors in the boat (grey water + sea water).

The old shower sump assembly had a little bilge pump, a float switch and is supposed to have a back flow preventer (which obviously failed).* Pictured below are the old sump assembly and the new Gulper.**

I also switched from the shower sump box to the Whale pump and it's one of the best improvements ever made to my boat. For a soap, you can't beat plain old Ivory if you want something that will rinse off perfectly and leave nothing behind but your behind.

I use Dove soap on board.
My fresh water is stored in S/S tanks and has never been in tank treated.
I have a carbon filter on the water for the galley sink from which drinking and cooking water is drawn.
The bottled water furphy is not accepted on board as it is a plastic consumer and a joke on the community.

Since my previous post on this thread I have halved my water tankage from 2000 lts (500 gal) to 1000 lt (250 gal) and installed a RO water maker.
Best decision I have ever made.
Still have enough water on board for the Boss and I to spend a week or so up the Creeks and Rivers and not have to get water from any other source.